{"id":29807,"date":"2025-07-28T23:48:13","date_gmt":"2025-07-28T23:48:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/29807\/"},"modified":"2025-07-28T23:48:13","modified_gmt":"2025-07-28T23:48:13","slug":"heart-warmingly-bad-start-for-bookies-at-ballybrit-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/29807\/","title":{"rendered":"Heart-warmingly bad start for bookies at Ballybrit \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the first race of this year\u2019s Galway Festival<\/a>, the hopes of punters rested ominously on a horse called Davy Crockett. <\/p>\n

If you were of a superstitious bent, as most racegoers are, it was not encouraging to reflect that the original, two-legged Davy Crockett is mainly famous for a doomed last stand at the Siege of the Alamo, where he and everyone else died.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, that Davy was not trained by Willie Mullins<\/a>, ridden by Cheltenham Gold Cup winner Mark Walsh or owned by JP McManus<\/a>. If he had been any of the foregoing, he would probably have been well out of Texas and by the time the trouble started. <\/p>\n

\"PamPam Richardson cuts a dash at the races. Photograph: Inpho \"AA young fan takes stock at Ballybrit. Photograph: Inpho <\/p>\n

Also encouraging to supporters of the four-legged version, meanwhile, was that his main rival was a horse named Mick Collins. That was hardly designed to reassure the nervous either. <\/p>\n

So the Mullins horse was backed into odds-on favouritism for the novice hurdle, and, as so often with Mullins-trained mounts, the weight of money proved well justified. <\/p>\n

Mick Collins briefly laid siege to Davy Crockett around the last bend after the latter made a mistake. But the favourite pulled clear up the straight and, roared to the finish line by a big opening-night crowd, got the festival off to a heart-warmingly bad start for the bookmakers.<\/p>\n

It was a different story in the second race, where another Mullins runner, Rakki, started favourite, albeit in a much more competitive field of 20. <\/p>\n

Among his backers, at a tenner each way, were two Slovakian sisters, Rebeka and Radka Kotulakova, who admitted they only picked the horse because he sounded like he was related to them. <\/p>\n

The Kotulakovas are third-year business information students at Galway\u2019s Atlantic Technological University<\/a>, now doing internships locally with Boston Scientific. <\/p>\n

\"TwinsTwins Rebeka and Radka Kotulakova, from Slovakia, at the opening night of the Galway Races. Photograph: Frank McNally <\/p>\n

Identical twins, they differed only when asked their age. \u201cTwenty three,\u201d Rebeka said. \u201cTwenty four,\u201d Radka suggested. Under further questioning, it emerged that like most twins they had in fact been born in the same year, but in August, so that, as they ultimately agreed in a joint statement, they are about to turn 24.<\/p>\n

The identical looks explained their outfits, among the most elegant on the racecourse amid stiff competition, although ladies day is not until Thursday. They wore also-identical Edwardian-style boating hats and dresses, except that Rebekah\u2019s ensemble was black with white ribbons while Radka\u2019s was white with black. <\/p>\n

If they\u2019d come later in the week (which they can\u2019t), The Irish Times suggested, they might have made history as the first joint winners of the best dressed lady competition. Alas, it was their debut visit to the festival and nobody had told them about lady\u2019s day in time.<\/p>\n

Also unfortunately, Rakki\u2019s co-ordination did not quite match theirs. He could finish only a distant third, while a 10-1 shot named Jerrari won well, to quieter cheers than those for Davy Crockett.<\/p>\n

\"JoanJoan Kennedy from Galway enjoying the first day of the Galway Racing Festival. Photograph:
\nInpho <\/p>\n

There was more pain for the bookies in the third, but Aidan O\u2019Brien\u2019s<\/a> Constitutional River went to the starting at intimidatingly thin odds that meant you had to risk \u20ac5 on him to win one. <\/p>\n

Then came the event bookmakers really dread: a horse that, wearing the green-and-gold of JP McManus, starts at long odds which then shrink under an avalanche of bets. Filey Bay was backed in from 16-1 to 7-1 while the bookies trembled. And even more than usually afterwards, McManus\u2019s shy smile looked like that of the cat that got the cream.<\/p>\n

There was some poignancy in the result, too, however. The winning jockey was Alan O\u2019Sullivan, a younger brother of the late Michael, who died days short of his 25th birthday last February after a fall in a race at Thurles<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the first race of this year\u2019s Galway Festival, the hopes of punters rested ominously on a horse…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":29808,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[18390,16176,18389,3004,101,56,54,55,18388],"class_list":["post-29807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-racing","tag-aidan-o-brien","tag-galway-races","tag-jp-mcmanus","tag-racing","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-willie-mullins"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29807","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29807"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29807\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29808"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}